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All day Batteries


Tim M

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So this may be old news, but I recently talked with a cameraman who has a battery setup where he just attaches another fresh battery to the back of the old battery and can do this to what seems to be infinity. He charges them this way in a huge stack on top of each other. I have a BDS system but don't like when I have to change out the battery by having to turn off my system. Would love if there was a way to put the new battery onto the back of the old battery and then have a mechanism to switch to the new battery and then be able to take off the old one, whereas never losing power...or never have to stop recording without requiring the extra weight of having each one of your devices to have internal batteries. I'm sure somebody out there has a system. Maybe two BDS systems I don't know would love to experiment.

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Changing battery, adjusting lav, bathroom break etc... These are all needed to give our back a break.

As far as hot swap, two battery in parallel is the way there. Call Cramped attic in Vancouver. You can get a little box that will protect your batteries when you hot swap or run two in parallel.

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Yeah, the IDX batteries......Sure he can just clip another to the back and keep going, but to this day I have yet to see a DP actually do that. It sounds good in theory, but in practice it just means the camera keeps getting heavier and longer. Its often easier to just cut for a few seconds and swap.

As for sound I like how you can switch SD mixers over to internal, replace ex battery and switch back. Doesn't work if you're powering rxs from that aswell though.

Always makes me wonder why we don't have the ability to power rxs from the mixer instead, like many cameras have 4-pin lemos for powering external gear. And have the Ex battery plugg right into the mixer, like on a camera.

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I know you want to avoid the internals, but in my old 744/442 bag I had everything powered from an np-1. It usually lasted a full day anyway, but when it didn't, swapping was easy. 788 had the smallest (and lightest) battery. 442 had its internal batteries. You switch the 442 from ext to int power, which can be done mid-take. 788 changes to int batt seamlessly on its own. The np-1 lives in the front pocket of my petrol. Change-over is easy and quick. Should work with other gear, too. No need then for the really heavy and large Endura. Damn, Rasmus just wrote basically the same. And much more concise

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Always makes me wonder why we don't have the ability to power rxs from the mixer instead, like many cameras have 4-pin lemos for powering external gear. And have the Ex battery plugg right into the mixer, like on a camera.

Nagra VI has 2 DC outputs, which AFAIK, loop out the external DC or the internal Li-ion battery.

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Tim: what kind of rig are you using? The 788T is pretty power hungry, the Nomad is pretty efficient. I don't know about the 664. I think somebody in the DIY section made a power Y cable that was for hot swapping batteries. Stacking would get heavy, and I think that's why they are not super popular with camera ops. I did work with a shooter that balanced his camera to have 2 batteries, and the outermost one was the one he would keep swapping and the inner one carried him through the swap. at least that's what i understood.

I could do this with a heavy setup for my Fusion10 in a PEGZ3. The Fusion has an internal NP1, and I would use an NP1 cup with an XLR4 end. The Fusion pulls from the external, when it dies, then flips to the internal and I can swap the external, and the Fusion will flip back to the external power. Those 3 LiIon NP1 batteries are 18+ hours of the Fusion (just the Fusion).

I would run a 10Ah battery I got from all-battery.com for the wireless and that's way more than my wireless needs for a day. I could actually run the Fusion and a bunch of wireless on a short day just off the one battery.

With my Nomad, I use a 6Ah camera battery to power everything. It will last a short day. If it's going to be a long day, I switch at lunch just to be safe. The Nomad, 788, 744, 644 all have batteries to keep the unit running at least long enough to swap out the big battery. You'll drop wireless that way, but that's about it.

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Yea I currently do the internal battery deal on my Nomad, which is of course much lighter than past configurations, but I love it being as light as it possibly can and not having batteries in any of the wireless and mixer does make it to me a noticeable lighter. That concept also f's with my brain, because eventually all those internal batteries will die and then one will have to go through the arduous haha process of changing them all out. I would love to have an easy power solution that has almost like a switch mechanism. Like with my BDS system has one slot for the battery, what if it had two slots with a switch above it where when you could insert another battery you can manually assign to that battery and then remove the old one.

In all truth I probably just need to buy more NP1 batteries. Anybody trying to use a solar to power their bag yet lol

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The only problem, possibly, with two batteries in parallel, is the problem that one battery may be drained by trying to charge the other battery serving the load (the equipment). I don't know if this is a problem or not --- just a thought. Maybe in parallel the load sees one big source of DC, it doesn't care what it's coming from, and the batteries, each of them, will just be giving off what they have available based on their state of charge. Someone with a much better understanding of electricity could chime in here.

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Nagra VI has 2 DC outputs, which AFAIK, loop out the external DC or the internal Li-ion battery.

Thanks for the info, hope SD and Zax might incooperate that in future products. Or start building the tx and rx straight into the mixer, like Zax is doing with the Maxx. That's a good step in the right direction. :)

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" in parallel the load sees one big source of DC, it doesn't care what it's coming from, and the batteries, each of them, will just be giving off what they have available based on their state of charge. "

in a simplistic way, generally correct.

" I wired two NP-1 cups in parallel to a single connector. "

ok, niow for weight considerations, carry it around with one battery for a while, and after a couple hours, attach the second (fresh) battery, and then remove the partly drained one for refreshing.

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I got a pair of the Paul Buff Batteries and a pair of the CHARGERS ... but I'd suggest one charger is enough, as it charges the battery very quickly.

 

This gives you 130wH in a single battery... using lithium gel technology vs. lithium ion... supposedly holds it's charge longer, and more stable with storage etc. I read about this in an older thread on JWsound AFTER buying a brand new pair of IDX NP7s that arrived from Adorama DOA. I called IDX about it... and they said that if the stock wasn't rotated every 5 months, that it was possible to have a battery arrive fully discharged... and in a state that it couldn't be charged. We ran the serial numbers, and they concluded this is what happened.

 

Well... that was enough to break my IDX loyalty and open the door to try something else. I was originally going to go with the Broadcast Batteries solution... since I had an IDX charger already... but on reading about that... and the half-tab, etc. I finally said screw it... if I was going to start improvising solutions... why not go all the way and try the double-life battery option that some others have tried on this forum

 

I got the Buff batteries... and had some minor issues at first. I do NOT like the Anderson connectors that they use... but that was a simple fix... something that I'll share with you, but I don't "recommend" you doing... because I'm not taking responsibility for somebody else who may have a brain-fart and plug an AC source to a DC unit... BUT... rather than fight the little DC connections that we have in our bags... I just used a regular AC cord for power delivery.

 

My Buff brick has the female end of an AC extension cord soldered on... then "buried" under some (gel version) Devcon 5 epoxy... to be sure it won't ever come loose... and my Remote Audio power cable has been replaced with the other end of the same extension cord... so that when the battery is loose... only the "wrong end" of a plug can plug into it... i.e. it's as idiot proof as I could make it... and it's also about a thousand times more secure than the Anderson connector was.

 

 

 

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Wow very interesting solutions Matt and David. David, I wondered about putting them in parallel and if that works then I might give it a try, but any possibility of temporarily giving a slightly larger charge than your equipment can handle? Sorry if that is simple Q.

Matt so what are the pros over your system than IDX? Besides occasional dead battery? Do yours not die quite as fast? Or last a lot longer? How do you know when the battery is recharged?

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What are the dimensions and weight of the Buff Brick Matt? It appears you're using just the "brick" part of the battery, correct? I looked on the site and couldn't find any specs. Do you know if this is small enough to be allowed on airlines? I've been using some Tenergy batteries (5800 mAh) for a couple of years and they work well but are starting to wear out. So is the charger. Starting to look for some new solutions.

use Traxxes connectors on mine which works pretty much the way the AC cord solution you came up with.

Bernie

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 Ever since I had a PSC M4 mk II and Alphamix which both had the ability to power everything with an internal NP1 and/or external source and change between without powering down I was hooked. I made an A/B switch modification to the battery bud, and now can switch between two sources seamlessly with NO powering down. 

   My power input is a 4 pin XLR with A source on pin 4 and B on pin 3. I then made made dual battery connectors that connect via 4pinXLR, for NP1, D-TAP, Anton Bauer and IDX battery connectors.

   Scott at Redding Audio provided me with the same switch that battery bud uses.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2044716442897.2105739.1393978139&type=3

 

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post-1316-0-88741100-1358225964_thumb.jp

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The IDX NH-204 DUAL Np-1 case is fitted with a 4 Pin XLR DC output connector, and the NH-202 is fitted with a 2 Pin DC output. The NH-201, NH-202, and NH-204 can be "hot-swapped" while the camera is still operating and is ideal for high power or long run time requirements. Dual boxes are ideal to utilize the weight advantage of Lithium Ion.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=Idx+dual+np-1&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&Top+Nav-Search=

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If you click the two links I provided... you'll see the battery and the accessory charger. A battery is 130 watt-hours... an IDX NP1 is 67 watt-hours. So darn near TWICE the battery life of a top-rated NP1... at probably close to the same weight. I think that speaks for itself... and that 2x battery is $90... not $217.

 

The charger is a simple little charger that goes from empty to full in just a few hours... automatically... plug it and leave it. If you change out the Anderson connectors as I have... then you need to make the same changes to the charger connector.

 

If you simply think of it as a two-part connector... then I'm a fan of standard AC extension cord... (if you want to do it the way I did)... otherwise you can get some small DC power connector... or else go with the cigarette lighter style interface. I wanted something "bombproof"... and EASY... so I chose the AC extension cord. (it's just a 2 connector connection so long as you don't one day do something stupid like plug your battery or wrong end of your charger into the wall).

 

So... bottom line? 2 times the battery life in a similar weight (and reasonable size) for half the cost. I don't know if the airlines will like my epoxy-creation, but as for specs... 130 watt-hour is fine according to the FAA websites. Where's the downside? Well... I don't know yet... but I probably won't be buying anymore NP1s anytime soon.

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Yea I currently do the internal battery deal on my Nomad, which is of course much lighter than past configurations, but I love it being as light as it possibly can and not having batteries in any of the wireless and mixer does make it to me a noticeable lighter. That concept also f's with my brain, because eventually all those internal batteries will die and then one will have to go through the arduous haha process of changing them all out.

 

Unless I completely misunderstood, the Nomad should eventually have the ability to charge the internal batteries. Right now I change mine *maybe* once a month and they seem to be strong.

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